mercury is in retrograde. i am going to take that opportunity to communicate to you in the mode my mind generally moves…

i spent september 11 in ny, getting on trains. i even had a meeting on wall street, and saw the stock exchange covered in the largest flag i have ever seen. i felt solo in a time warp of sorrow and grief. grief stays sharp, i had a vision for a moment of bodies piled up everywhere. bodies from violence that led towards september 11, and from that day, and the days since then. bodies beyond assumption or grace. i wondered how people can walk around down there, giggling, shopping, conducting business. to me it is a war zone.

my nephew is heaven on earth, so delectable and smart and opened wide.

a new cousin was born yesterday morning at 6am.

my sister and i, having undergone deep reconciliation, are now offering advice for other siblings on key questions that can save your relationship. this makes me unbelievably happy, to be living, learning and sharing as we go, together.

i don’t have it in my heart to pay right wing radical haters any attention, so the power that glenn beck is building up to point at some one and lead to their resignation is a truly unwelcome distraction. i am pleased to see the transformative, refocusing efforts by center for media justice, the league, jeff chang and others. to learn from this moment, to have humility to see that we are vulnerable, possibly even to shift out of strategies that have us reacting to and legitimizing racist opposition…can we do it? we need health care and climate change policy that gives us a fighting chance at seven generations; we need to practice solutions in our local communities that lift us above the fray of national punditry – everyone, play your position.

there is a meal i love. grilled sirloin steak with bearnaise sauce and herbed butter, crispy skinny fries with mayo and ketchup, followed by profiteroles with chocolate sauce. just want to acknowledge that, to all the people i have individually manipulated to share that meal with me while in ny.

and…nyc is no longer my city. this visit has clarified that i love people in nyc, and their lives here. but the pace exhausts me, the unspoken rush at all times, i feel it in my spine and my knee. i wake up heart pounding, just because there are so many hearts pounding all around me. i need more space than this, i need real dirt without gates around it. i think i will never fit in this city again as a new yorker.

and that’s ok, all of these things i am peace with. i can put on my black, and blend in and vicariously new york again.